Dame Mary backs abuse trial friend
THE wife of disgraced Tory peer Jeffrey Archer yesterday told a court a defendant accused of sexually abusing a boy for nearly a decade was a ‘kind-hearted’ and ‘generous’ woman.
Dame Mary Archer appeared as a character witness for Lady Nourse, 77, who is accused of 17 offences dating from the 1980s.
She told how she and Lord Archer, who was jailed for perjury in 2001, spent Christmas Eves, New Year’s Eves and holidays with Nourse and her late husband, Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Nourse.
Appearing on the third day of the trial, she said the couples got to know each other in 1980 when the Nourses moved to Grantchester, near Cambridge, and they regularly ‘wined and dined’ together. She said: ‘She has a kind heart. I am very fond of her.’ She said she was one of her closest friends. The jury has heard a recording in which the alleged victim tells how he had been abused as a boy and said Sir Martin, who died in 2017 aged 85, had ‘looked the other way’. Nourse described the allegations against her as ‘cloud cuckoo land’. The former PR firm boss denies five counts of indecent assault and 12 of indecency with a child between 1981 and 1990. The case continues.